Oakley Motion drybag backpack

Just spent 2 months test-driving my Oakley Motion drybag backpack in Indo. And it delivered. Used and abused it every single day during our holiday and it passed with flying colours.

I always take a drybag with on surf trips, as they're indispensable when it comes to keeping your gear and camera stuff dry. Up til now I'd been using the normal drybags which are just the waterproof bag that rolls up at the top and clips shut. 

However, these are a bit of a hack if you're swimming in to shore from the boat, as you have to kinda swim them in like a waterpolo ball and keep chucking them in front of you. Mission of note - specially if you're planning to swim in over reef or a gnarly shorepound. And then when you're on land you have to carry the damn thing in your hand. So hassle factor all round.

So I started to look for a drypack that was a backpack as well, and found the Oakley Motion. Managed to get hold of one the day before we left. So glad that I did!

All the advantages of a drybag with the added convenience of being a backpack. Just gooi all your goodies in the bag, clip it shut, chuck it on your back and you good to go - sooooo much better than having to carry it.

What's great about the Oakley Motion is that the straps are proper straps, so it's a really comfortable all purpose backpack. They're padded and have lil vent hole thingy's so you don't get all sweaty. Am sure Oakley has some uber-technical space age name for them, but whatever they called they stop you getting sticky. 

Same goes for the area of the bag in contact with your back - nicely padded cushioning so no matter what you've chucked in the bag it isn't going to poke uncomfortably into your back. Cleverly designed back padding means a good airflow, which means no sticky sweaty issues. Important if you're in the tropics!

The fact that it's so comfy to wear makes the bag really useful, cos it means it can double as your every day backpack when you missioning around the islands, hiking up mountains or exploring the jungle. And it doesn't matter if you get caught in a tropical downpour cos your stuff will stay dry - even if you don't.

The Oakley Motion can handle some pounding. Chucked my Canon and a big zoom lens in it and swam to shore through a fairly decent shorey no prob's. So much nicer to just be able to strap it on and swim instead of having to paddle a pack to shore. 

It has compression straps on the side of the bag so you can tighten it up nicely to make sure stuff doesn't move about too much, and then has a chest and a waist strap which makes sure it stays nice and vas on you.

The chest & waist straps are also handy when you using it as a normal daypack cos it distributes the weight of the bag so you aren't carrying everything on your shoulders.

Space-wise you can fit a fair bit into it. It's cleverly designed and has a thick padded central divider across the middle, which makes 2 equal sized compartments. Useful if you wanna chuck a laptop on one side and all you gear on the other.

You're not going to fit your grandmother in there, but it happily takes a full size camera, a big zoom and a bunch of other lenses, a coupla small action cams, a towel, coupla sunglass cases, water bottle, a book or two, a few shirts and other bits and pieces with room to spare. I never had a situation where I couldn't fit in everything I wanted to carry.

There are a bunch of attachment points on the straps, so you can just chuck on a clip or two if you wanted to clip on more stuff. At one stage I had 2 water bottles dangling off either side and my travel pillow hooked up top.

There's a useful grab handle at the top to lift it with when it isn't on your back. It also makes it easy to hang the bag up if you don't wanna put it down on the sand for instance. Just hook it on a branch or on a stick. Closing it's easy - just roll the top over a few times and clip it closed. Simple, yet watertight.

There's a small slim-line zippered pocket on the front of the bag where you can stash your phone or some cash. Just note that this is only water resistant, not waterproof - the main compartment of the bag is waterproof cos of how it closes - but the pocket is zipped - and zips ain't waterproof. So if you taking it swimming just remember to put anything electronic in the main part of the bag. There's some cool reflective tape round the edge of the zipper so you can glow in the dark.

Overall impressions? The Oakley Motion rocks. Will never go on a surf trip without it. Works great as a drybag and doubles up as an everyday backpack. Two for the price of one. Happy.

Want one? Tune the ou's at Oakley and they'll make a plan to get one to wherever you at.
https://www.facebook.com/Oakley.Africa